


The Hardest Thing in the World

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:14:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28609644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Detective Remus J. Lupin meets his new partner. Sirius Black seems alright, only he’s very eager to point out that they're not on a date.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 27
Kudos: 148





	The Hardest Thing in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maraudorable (violentthunder)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentthunder/gifts).



> I'm doing Fanfiction Trope Mash-Up [on Tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com) and this story is Detective AU plus Not a Date for @violentthunder! I hope you like our boys being small town detectives in the 80s, even though I must admit there's very little actual detective work in this story, just to, you know, so that I managed to keep it in 5k words and still squeeze in a sex scene! Priorities. And well of course I don't know anything about detectives.

Remus met his new partner on Monday morning. Dumbledore introduced them and they shook hands. Sirius Black, so he thought, seemed confident, a little jumpy, and more handsome than would have been ideal, but he wasn’t going to think about that. He would get on with Sirius just fine, like he got on with everyone. People didn’t generally like him much but didn’t hate him either. Sirius would be the same.  
  
Two hours later, Sirius suggested they’d go to talk to people at the gas station about the body that had been found in the ditch nearby three days ago. He agreed. Then Sirius told him it wasn’t a date.  
  
“What?” he asked.  
  
“It’s not a date,” Sirius said, looking at the papers on his desk. Then he blinked and glanced at Remus. “What?”  
  
“Nothing,” Remus said. Oh, god, had he looked at Sirius the wrong way? Did Sirius think that he was interested? It seemed a little improbable, since no one usually realised he was interested, not even when he wanted them to. Maybe Sirius was suspecting, but it couldn’t be more than that. From now on, Remus would make himself appear as normal as possible. Everything would be alright.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Where’re you from?” Sirius asked, when they were driving away from the gas station. It seemed probable that the owner genuinely didn’t know anything about the murder.  
  
Remus took a deep breath. “Wales.”  
  
“Wales? How nice.” Sirius glanced at him. “Is it? I’ve never been.”  
  
He kept his eyes on the road. It had been raining, which was nothing new. “I guess it’s not _not_ nice. If you like…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Wind and sheep.”  
  
“Wind and sheep?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, is that why you left?”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Because we aren’t in Wales now,” Sirius said. Remus could feel his eyes on him. “You must’ve left at some point. Didn’t you like sheep?”  
  
He swallowed. “No, I didn’t like sheep.” He could hear – _no_ , he could _feel_ Sirius thinking about the next question, but thank god Dumbledore called them. The victim’s aunt had been found, so they went to talk to her. She had a house that looked like a shack and a garden full of white roses. It all seemed a little sad somehow. Remus tried not to think about sad things and do his job instead, and while he was at it, Sirius managed to talk her into making them tea, and so they sat at the table in a small kitchen. There were roses in the wallpaper. Sirius sipped his tea and Remus did not, because it was against the protocol and one of them had to be able to call for help if the old lady tried to poison them. But no one got poisoned, and fifteen minutes later they left.  
  
“I think it’s nice,” Sirius said in the car, “that you’re from Wales. Like, you’ve had a real countryside childhood. Like… nature. Nature and stuff. I’m from London, you know, and of course we had a house in the countryside, but we only spent there like, maybe two months a year. My father was there all the time, but my mother hates him, and she kept me and Regulus in London with her.” Sirius glanced at Remus. “Regulus is my brother.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Sirius cleared his throat. “Was. He _was_ my brother. Sorry. I always… wrong tense.”  
  
Remus opened his mouth.  
  
“He died last year,” Sirius said and then nodded at the side window. “Can we stop? I’m hungry.”  
  
“I’m… now?”  
  
“Yeah. There’s McDonald’s there, can you see? We can go there. It’ll just take twenty minutes.”  
  
“Fine. I…”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Sirius said, smiled and patted him on the knee. He jumped. “It’s not a date.”  
  
He stopped the car at the red light. It was raining harder. “Why would you –“  
  
“So, Wales,” Sirius said. “Why did you leave?”  
  
“I don’t…”  
  
“You don’t know?”  
  
“No, I… there was nothing for me in there.”  
  
Sirius looked at him. He looked away. “Do you miss it?”  
  
He turned the car to the parking lot. “No.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
In a few days Remus began to think that maybe he and Sirius would get along more than adequately well. He tried not to show Sirius that he actually liked the man and didn’t have a clue if it was working. But he wasn’t the only one. They found the man who had dumped the body in the ditch after a quarrel behind a bar and it was mostly because Sirius seemed to get to anyone tell him anything. Everyone liked Sirius. Some people looked like they didn’t want to, but they did anyway. Sirius smiled at people, asked them about their gardens and their dogs, and Remus stood aside and wondered how that was even possible. It was almost like magic. He also wondered if maybe Sirius was making Remus like him, too. Maybe Sirius was doing it on purpose.  
  
“It wouldn’t be a date,” Sirius said on Friday evening, when all the paperwork had been finished and they were finally about to leave the station. “It’d be just nice, you know. I don’t know any places in town.”  
  
“Places?”  
  
“Bars. I mean bars.”  
  
“There aren’t many bars in here,” Remus said. It was a small town put in the wrong place. The distance to London was as long as the distance to Birmingham and they both were too far away. When Remus had found the town in the map, he had thought it would be the kind of a town where people got forgotten.  
  
“A pub, then,” Sirius said. His ponytail was a mess and he had opened at least three top buttons of his shirt. Remus didn’t know when that had happened. “Anything. Just, I don’t know anyone in this town besides you, and I don’t want to be alone at home on Friday evening.”  
  
Remus swallowed.  
  
“Unless you have plans already. But then you can just invite me with you.” Sirius paused. “Unless it’s a date.”  
  
“I don’t do dates,” Remus said and then coughed. He hadn’t meant it to come out so sharp. “I mean, I don’t have plans.”  
  
“Great,” Sirius said and smiled at him. He wondered vaguely if Sirius even knew what his smile did to people. And then he wondered how the hell Sirius could _not_ know. Certainly Sirius knew, and he used it, and he was using it now. “Then you can take me out,” Sirius said. “Not on a date. Just a few drinks at the pub, that kind of a thing. A few more, if we feel like it.”  
  
“Okay,” Remus said. He felt thin and hollow and oddly hopeful, and then angry at himself for that. It was not a date.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He picked Sirius up five past eight after waiting at the parking lot nearby for twenty minutes, because he had been fifteen minutes early.  
  
“Sorry I’m late,” he said to Sirius, who climbed onto the passenger seat. Sirius smelled better than anyone ever had any right to smell.  
  
“I’m always late, too,” Sirius said and blinked at the radio. Margaret Thatcher was speaking. “Who’s that?”  
  
Remus glanced at him. “Margaret Thatcher?”  
  
“Right,” Sirius said slowly. “Thanks for picking me up.”  
  
Remus started driving and didn’t think about how close Sirius seemed to be to him. They had already sat in Remus’ car for hours this week. This wasn’t any different. “You asked me to.”  
  
“Yeah, well. Thank you.” Sirius took a deep breath and then opened his top button. He was wearing a shirt that looked too fancy for the pub they were on their way to. It was dark blue, and Remus was almost certain it _shimmered._ “I guess I should tell you something,” Sirius said.  
  
“Alright. Okay.”  
  
“I don’t drive much.”  
  
“…you don’t drive much?”  
  
“I _can_ drive. Or at least… I have a licence. And it’s legal.”  
  
“You’re a cop,” Remus said, “and you have a legal driving licence.”  
  
“Yeah. So, that’s good. But I’m not really… _you_ are very good at driving, which is nice, so I’m not going to have to drive much. That’s good.”  
  
“I’m not _very good_ at driving,” Remus said and cleared his throat.  
  
“You’re great,” Sirius said and smiled at him. He almost collided with a traffic sing, but Sirius didn’t seem to notice. After that, he tried not to look at Sirius at all, and it worked out until they got the pub, parked the car and went in, and there was nothing to look at except Sirius. It was one of those places where Remus had come for a drink or two when he had been new in town and had had some kind of an idealistic thought that he might find friends. Now, there were three young women at the counter eyeing Sirius, and Remus wished he would have taken Sirius anywhere else.  
  
“Nice place,” Sirius said and asked him what he wanted. He said Sirius didn’t have to. Sirius said he insisted and grinned at him in the way that made him short of breath and too hot in his pullover. He said a beer would be nice. Sirius got a beer for him and a glass of wine for himself and chose the table furthest away from the women who were obviously trying to flirt. “Want to try?” Sirius asked, nodding at the glass of wine.  
  
“No,” Remus said quickly, “no, I was just… so, you drink wine.”  
  
“Just try it,” Sirius said and gave him the glass. “It’s nice. I can get you one, if you like it.”  
  
“No, I…” But he already had the glass in his hand and Sirius was looking at him, so he sipped the wine. It tasted like wine. “I’m not really a wine person,” he said and gave the glass back to Sirius.  
  
“Ah,” Sirius said. “A beer person?”  
  
“I suppose.”  
  
“You suppose?”  
  
“More like… an apple juice person.”  
  
Sirius smiled just a little, and slowly, as if he was wondering if it was a joke or not. Remus tried not to look like he thought they were on a date. They weren’t. He knew that. Sirius wasn’t interested. _He_ wasn’t interested, because they were working together, and Sirius definitely wasn’t even gay.  
  
“So, I’m gay,” Sirius said and glanced around. “But I can see you didn’t bring me to a gay bar.”  
  
Remus swallowed, and swallowed again, and then sipped his beer. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“Not that I mind, because I don’t. But just out of curiosity, is there a gay bar here?”  
  
“No,” Remus said, his voice coming out hoarse and _wrong_ , “no, I… I wouldn’t know. I don’t really… how can you…”  
  
“How can I what?”  
  
Oh, god. He was running out of beer already. “You said that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said, staring at him. “I did.”  
  
“But you said it like it was…”  
  
“Well, to my defence, I thought you might’ve already picked it up. You’re a detective, after all.”  
  
“I… I really hadn’t.”  
  
“And it’s not like it’s a bad thing,” Sirius said and sipped his wine, but his eyes staid on Remus. “It’s not like you’re going to judge me.”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
“So, no reason for me not to say it, really, was there? And now you can stop glaring at those poor women at the counter.”  
  
“I wasn’t…” He took a very deep breath. “I wasn’t glaring at them.”  
  
“Sure,” Sirius said.  
  
“I think… I think I need to say something.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Remus clenched his fists under the table, his fingernails digging into his palms. “I’m, too. I’m also… I’m gay.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“…you _know?_ How?”  
  
“Well,” Sirius said and shrugged, “I can see the way you look at me. I’m not _blind._ ”  
  
“You can…” Oh, god. Oh, _god._ He had been staring at Sirius and Sirius had noticed, within _five days_ , that Remus was interested. That was bad. That was terrible, and not only because they were _working_ together. If Remus had been so bluntly obvious about it…  
  
“Stop worrying,” Sirius said. “It’s not obvious. Or it is to me, but not to other people.”  
  
“How would you…”  
  
“Trust me. No one knows. Except maybe Dumbledore. He seems like a guy who finds out everyone’s secrets so that he can keep us in silent fear indefinitely.”  
  
“No, he’s… he’s been very nice to me. He gave me the job.”  
  
“You don’t have to thank him for that.”  
  
“Of course I do. I…” Apparently his hands were shaking. He kept them under the table and wondered if Sirius noticed. He looked away and tried to think about anything except Sirius. “So, what do you think of the town?”  
  
“I think it’s nice,” Sirius said, sounding perfectly calm as if both of them hadn’t just announced they were gay. In a pub. On Friday evening. Just like that, as if it was easy or something. Remus supposed he had maybe told four people in his life and every time it had led to a catastrophe of some kind. Now he was already holding his breath. “People seem friendly. And everyone we’ve met so far seems to have lived here all their life.”  
  
“Except us,” Remus said and bit his lip.  
  
“Yeah. Except us. Are you hungry? Should we get something to eat? I’ll get us fries.”  
  
“No, you don’t need to –,“ he said, but Sirius was already standing up. He watched as Sirius walked to the counter and said something to the bartender. The three women smiled at Sirius and then one of them, possibly the prettiest, said something and patted the empty bench next to her. Sirius smiled and shook his head, and then came back to Remus. Remus stared.  
  
“Don’t look like that,” Sirius said. “You’re looking at me as if you thought I would sneak out through the window.”  
  
Remus swallowed.  
  
“I’m not going to sneak out through the window,” Sirius said. “So, talk to me about something.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“Anything. About you, preferably. Tell me what you do in your free time.”  
  
Remus didn’t do anything in his free time, so he told Sirius that. Then somehow Sirius managed to make him say that he actually read quite a lot, usually novels but lately, he had tried some cultural history and a little bit of philosophy. He had found that metaphysics was hopeless but that he had a soft spot for ethics. Sirius asked him what metaphysics was and he couldn’t explain, and then he tried to make Sirius say something about himself, why he had come to the town, that sort of things. But the fries came and after a while Remus realised that they were talking about him again and he still didn’t know anything about Sirius, except that Sirius’ favourite colour was purple. That was weird. Purple was nobody’s favourite colour.  
  
“So,” Sirius said, when they had finished the fries and two glasses of beer or wine, “where do you live?”  
  
“Just down the road,” Remus said, blinking. He had probably never seen anyone as handsome as Sirius ever before. Or maybe in the magazines, but that didn’t compare _at all._ He couldn’t believe that he was sitting in a pub across someone who looked like that. And was nice. And clever. And smelled so good. It was as if he was dreaming or something, only in a dream they would’ve been on a date. He saw that kind of dreams all the time these days. Apparently the more he tried not to think about anyone while he was awake, the more he did that in his dreams. Usually he dreamed about movie stars or men in bed with him whose face he never saw, or about the boy from Wales.  
  
“Can I come over?” Sirius asked.  
  
“What?” Remus asked.  
  
“We can just drink tea, if you like.”  
  
“…okay.”  
  
“Or not. If you like.”  
  
“I thought this wasn’t…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“A date.”  
  
Sirius reached across the table and touched the back of his hand so lightly he barely felt it. “It isn’t. But it could be. You choose.”  
  
“So, if I say that we can have tea, it means that –“  
  
“It means only tea. Or a little bit more. Whatever you prefer.”  
  
He swallowed. “We can have tea.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
They had tea in Remus’ apartment above the butcher’s shop, two blocks from the church. On Sunday mornings he woke up to the bells ringing and pulled the curtains aside and the church was watching him, looking as disappointed as his mother. Now he checked twice that the curtains were closed, and Sirius watched him but didn’t say anything, which was fine, because he already knew Sirius thought he was being odd. It wasn’t as if it was illegal anymore. And besides, nothing was going to happen. He was just drinking tea in his kitchen eleven o’clock in the evening with his colleague, who just happened to look so good he thought he could feel something crawling inside his skin.  
  
He looked away.  
  
“I like you, you know,” Sirius said, drinking the tea.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Obviously, since I invited myself to your home in the middle of the night.”  
  
“… _why?_ ”  
  
“I don’t know exactly,” Sirius said, tilting his head to the side and watching Remus, which was the last thing Remus wanted Sirius to do. He knew his hair was a mess and he had dark rings under his eyes and the light in the kitchen made him look half-dead and also he was probably blushing. “You look like you’re trying to hide yourself,” Sirius said. “Even when you’re right there. You look like you’re trying so, so hard to be some kind of a… different version of yourself. I feel like I want to grab you and open you and see what’s inside. Who you are.” He paused. “But it’s the gay thing, isn’t it? That’s what you’re hiding?”  
  
Remus shook his head.  
  
“It _isn’t?_ ”  
  
“No, it’s… yeah, I suppose. I just meant… I don’t look like I’m hiding something, do I?”  
  
“You look like you’re hiding everything,” Sirius said. “But then again, you’re also hot, so that’s why I’ve been looking at you so much. I’m sure some people think that you’re just shy.”  
  
“I am shy.”  
  
“No, you just have a secret you’re trying to keep very hard. That does it.”  
  
Remus cleared his throat. “I know it’s stupid. It’s just my… It’s just my sexuality. There’re other things about me. But sometimes it’s like…”  
  
“Like there’s only this one aspect of yourself that you have to hide, but in order to hide it, you have to turn yourself inside out.”  
  
He stared at Sirius. Sirius blinked and sipped his tea.  
  
“I’m gay, too, you know,” Sirius said. “And an heir to a prestigious old family. My mother’s been quite articulate about her wish that I need to find a girl and get married.”  
  
“Is that… why you’re here?”  
  
“Partly.” Sirius said and leaned back in his chair. “I like your flat, by the way.”  
  
“I’ve been meaning to say,” Remus said, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry about your brother.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sirius said. “Let me ask you something.”  
  
Remus breathed in slowly. “Okay.”  
  
“If I asked you to go on a date with me, would you?”  
  
“I don’t…”  
  
“Don’t say you don’t want to,” Sirius said, “if you want to and are only afraid.”  
  
Remus listened the clock ticking on the wall. He listened the creaking of the floor when he shifted his weight on the chair and the sound of his own breathing. “It’s not just that I’m afraid.”  
  
“Sure it is,” Sirius said. His voice was quiet and gentle and Remus certainly hadn’t wanted anyone so badly since he had left Wales. “You can do it even if you’re afraid. But if you don’t want to, it’d be for nothing. So, I’m here, and _I_ want to, and I’m asking you if _you_ want to.”  
  
“…yeah.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Great,” Sirius said. “When? How about right now?”  
  
“What –“  
  
“I think,” Sirius said, “that since it’s pretty late, we could just agree to skip the movie and the dinner and to move straight to the part in which I’m in your kitchen and I ask you if you want me to stay for a night.”  
  
“Do you…”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You want to…”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Okay,” Remus said. “Okay, then I’m just going to… sure. Yeah. I’d like it if you stayed. But I don’t have anywhere for you to sleep, except my bed.”  
  
“Remus,” Sirius said in a soft voice and stood up. He circled the table, leaned down to take Remus’ hand and pulled Remus onto his feet. He put one of his hands on Remus’ left shoulder and held Remus’ chin with the other, and then he let out a tiny surprised noise when Remus kissed him on the mouth.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“What happened in Wales?”  
  
“What do you mean, what happened in Wales?” Remus asked. He had his eyes closed and he was breathing hard, and next to him, Sirius was sitting on the mattress. He felt it on his back every time when Sirius shifted.  
  
“Why did you leave? It has something do to with this –,” and Sirius ran his fingers over the zipper of Remus’ trousers. “Doesn’t it?”  
  
Remus rolled onto his side, facing Sirius. “You keep asking questions.”  
  
“Because I want to know everything about you,” Sirius said and settled down on the bed next to him. Sirius’ fancy shirt was wrinkled now and he had taken his jeans off before he had got onto Remus’ bed. He hadn’t asked Remus to do the same, though, and Remus hadn’t. “Alright. I can ask something else. Have you ever had sex?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“No?”  
  
Remus shook his head. “You don’t seem surprised.”  
  
“I’m not surprised.”  
  
“I’m twenty-seven and I’ve never had sex.”  
  
“I’m twenty-seven and I’ve never… ridden a bus.”  
  
“You’ve never ridden a bus?”  
  
“Weird, right?”  
  
“No, I just… you’re trying to make me feel better.”  
  
“Of course I am. Was there someone in Wales?”  
  
“…yeah.”  
  
“Did he broke your heart?”  
  
“I broke both of our hearts, when… when my parents found out.”  
  
“Sorry,” Sirius said and started stroking his hair.  
  
“They mean well,” he said, feeling as if he was echoing something he had told himself over and over again. “They just can’t understand that… the life they want for me, they think I’d be happy, but I just… I just can’t.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said. His fingers were gentle and careful.  
  
“I’m wrong, like, no matter what I do, I just don’t fit –“  
  
“No,” Sirius said, “no, you aren’t _wrong_ , you’re _right_ , you’re more than right, Remus. I knew that immediately. When we met, I mean. I knew that I want you.”  
  
Remus closed his eyes. Just for a second. “Like what?”  
  
“Like, anything,” Sirius said. “What do you want? We could go back to kissing. Now that we can breathe again. And we managed to get to bed.”  
  
“I think,” Remus said and grabbed Sirius’ hand that was still in his hair. He wrapped his fingers around Sirius’ wrist and felt Sirius’ pulse beating against his thumb. “Have you done it?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I didn’t tell you what.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve done it. Unless you’re talking about something extremely imaginative.”  
  
“You’ve had sex.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Can you… do you know how to…” He took a deep breath, but his heart was stuck in his throat. “Can you fuck me?”  
  
“I can,” Sirius said slowly, “but I thought, maybe a handjob. Or something. Since you haven’t done it before.”  
  
“I’ve done that.”  
  
“You said you haven’t had sex.”  
  
“I didn’t think handjobs counted.”  
  
“Of course they count.” Sirius crawled closer to him on the bed, pushed the hair from his face and looked him in the eyes from too close. “You could fuck me, you know. It’d be easier that way.”  
  
“No,” he said, “no, I want you to… I’ve been thinking about it.”  
  
“You’ve been thinking about it.”  
  
“A lot.”  
  
“A lot –“  
  
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, looking at the ceiling, “that it’d never happen. I screwed everything up at home and then I came here because I couldn’t have lived my life there, I felt like I was… playing a part in a play or something. My whole life was a play. But here, it’s like I know who I am but I’m trying to hide from it, or maybe I’m just waiting, I’m waiting for something to happen so that I can finally be happy, at least for a moment, because it’d be unrealistic to be happy for a long time, wouldn’t it? I think what’s reasonable to hope for is that I’d get to be happy for a short while. But it’s like… the hardest thing in the world, to find someone you like and who likes you and _sees_ you and wants to _touch_ you and…”  
  
“Remus,” Sirius said, “I want to touch you.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Remus said he didn’t have condoms, Sirius said he did. Remus asked if they needed lube or something, or oil, he probably had oil, and Sirius told him the condom was lubricated. He was pretty sure they’d need oil anyway. But when Sirius settled in between his spread knees, held his hips in place and pressed his fingertip barely inside, Sirius’ fingers were dripping with something warm and wet. Remus tried to relax but couldn’t, and he tried to apologise but Sirius wouldn’t let him, and he tried to grab his dick but Sirius took it in his hand first and started tugging him so slowly it wasn’t doing anything for him except maybe cutting through the awkwardness and pain. He counted to ten inside his head. He thought about Sirius sitting in between his legs and that soon Sirius was going to push inside him and fuck him, really fuck him, and maybe he wouldn’t like that after all and then he would surely be disappointed, or maybe relieved, but he wanted to know, he _had_ to know, after all that time he had spent thinking about it.  
  
But when he finally had Sirius inside him, it was a little bit too much. He breathed and panted and stared at Sirius whose face was weirdly close at him again, and at least Sirius was flushed now, too, and breathless, and looked like he didn’t know what to say.  
  
“Okay,” Remus said when he felt that maybe he could take it.  
  
Sirius gave the softest little kiss on his chest and then started moving.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Remus woke up to the phone ringing. He opened his eyes. Sirius was in bed next to him, his arm resting on Remus’ chest. Heavy, and warm.  
  
“Sorry,” Remus said and climbed out of the bed, “sorry, I need to…” And then he went to answer the phone. It was Dumbledore, who apologised for waking him up early on Saturday morning but there was a body behind the post office, so could Remus get there and pick Sirius up on the way, because for some reason Sirius wasn’t answering his phone? Remus said he could do that and went back to the bedroom.  
  
Sirius was sitting on the edge of the mattress, looking tired, with nothing but socks on, and in front of him his pants were floating in the air.  
  
“What?” Remus asked.  
  
“I thought I might take a shower,” Sirius said, glanced at him, glanced at him again and froze.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They spent forty-five minutes at the crime scene. It was raining and Sirius was only wearing a light coat from yesterday, but he didn’t seem to get wet or cold. Remus tried not to look at him.  
  
Half-past eight they were the only ones still at the station and he had said twice that Sirius should go home. Sirius was still sitting at his desk across from Remus’. He had four coffee mugs on the desk and he was wearing Remus’ shirt.  
  
“Really,” Remus said. “We aren’t going to get anything done today. Just go home. It’s Saturday night.”  
  
Sirius sat back in his chair, glanced around and sighed. Remus looked away. He would have to talk about it eventually. He would have to ask. Maybe he was going crazy. Maybe he had a brain tumour. Maybe it had been a trick of some sort. And after they talked, maybe he could stop thinking about it and start thinking about what he had let Sirius do… no, what he had _asked_ Sirius to do last night, and how the whole day he had felt as if he was somehow new under his skin.  
  
“Hey,” Sirius said. Remus looked at him. Sirius looked back and waved with his fingers, and the coffee mug arose two or three inches from the desk and stayed there, in the air, floating.  
  
“That’s not real,” Remus said.  
  
“I like you,” Sirius said. “I want to go on a date.”


End file.
